


ah*, there he is

by iimpavid, scarebeast



Category: The Silmarillion and other histories of Middle-Earth - J. R. R. Tolkien
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Alternate Universe - Cyberpunk, Cyborgs, Established Relationship, Everyone Is Alive, Fluff and Angst, M/M, Mad Scientists, Science Fiction, Vampires
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-07-25
Updated: 2018-07-25
Packaged: 2019-06-15 22:10:45
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 5,484
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15422673
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/iimpavid/pseuds/iimpavid, https://archiveofourown.org/users/scarebeast/pseuds/scarebeast
Summary: *that motherfuckerwhat a tool- sue, "Him"(The one where Fëanor is a mad scientist and gets his whole damn bloodline cursed with something adjacent to vampirism in attempt to give souls to androids.)





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> This is a pet project of ours, drawn almost entirely from an RP, and entirely unbeta'd. Expect us to refuse proper capitalization for the #aesthetic and to butcher a lot of sindarin and quenya. Mangling conlangs is a beloved tradition in our friendship; we're not about to give it up now! Mouse over the elvish text to get what we were aiming for in translation.

"inada, it isn't that complicated. the soul is the metaphysical manifestation of the self, isn't it? and we know, from history, that it can be divorced from the body at length and accomplish a great deal."

celebrimbor did not _intend_ to sit in his grandfather's lab drinking into the wee hours but his own work-- a prosthetic hand for maedhros that would wire itself directly into his nervous system, creating new connections as his synapses learned new patterns, one that would have the same instinctive movements and reflexes and twitches of discomfort as living flesh; all while being delicate to behold as latticework silver and stronger than girded steel-- had hit a wall somewhere around midnight. frustrated and too tired to do more good than harm, he had given up and given in to fëanor's offer for a late night drink. fëanor himself never indulged; nor did he seem to tire at his work, whatever work that may have been. tonight it was an android's chest cavity, divorced from its limbs and cracked open like some unlucky crustacean. it had been a defective model, one of some dozens fëanor had scavenged over the last few weeks to feed his newest obsession: the creation of light and life from the still darkness of technology.

"all you need to do is lead the soul into its new body. everyone is unique of course so you would need to have some element to the housing that would speak directly to it--"

finally, he looked up. fëanor had stopped prodding the motherboard on his desk and was looking at celebrimbor with rapt attention that cut like obsidian. his eyes, as if he were a cat that had sighted prey, were nearly consumed by his pupils.

"-- but i don't know what i'm on about." he cut himself off, lamely, trying to laugh at the empty glass in his hand. "too much "adallant makes for an incoherent trail."

fëanor did not so much as blink. "follow it anyway, as best you can."

"it cannot be done. not-- not with the tools we have on hand, inada," he amended quickly, seeing fëanor's eyes narrow. "it would require magic that we forgot many, many aeons ago. and you would also have to have a fëa , free of its hröa\--"

he stumbled through his thoughts but fëanor was patient. without even the movement of breath, he watched his grandson and waited.

"there are ways written about to breathe the fëa from a person," celebrimbor went on, at last, choosing his words as carefully as his muzzy brain would let him, "and if you could manage that then contain the fëa in some vessel-- a jewel would have to be forged just for it, most likely, something the likes of which the earth has not known since valinor. the fëa is just too great a force for anything lesser-- but if one could do such a thing, then the rest would be simple. it would need a body to inhabit and something that would call it out from the jewel and into its new... form. i imagine something the person had loved but something deeply longed for might also suffice for such a sigul."

he found the courage to look at his grandfather again but fëanor had already returned to his work, dismantling the motherboard with expert precision. and without gloves. despite the many, many hazards of handling his tools and the delicate, caustic chemicals within android microsystems he never wore them, claimed that they dulled his sense of touch and therefore his ability to work. as such his hands were covered in an embroidery of scars and calluses. one would think that those did his sense of touch worse than any glove might have.

it seemed now that fëanor did not realize celebrimbor was there. He did not even seem to see the android under his hands. he had gone elsewhere.

after the silence stretched on long enough to itch and ache, celebrimbor said, "inada, you can't be thinking of-- to do such a thing is impossible. there are too many variables. and if it were possible, it is not right."

fëanor's smile was distant and his eyes, when he looked at celebrimbor once more, were lit with blue flame. "it is past time you went home to sleep for the night, isn't it, inolnin?"

celebrimbor laughed, uneasy. "i'm no longer a child."

"of course not. nonetheless, you need your rest. you work will be no easier for your sleep deprivation or hangover."

"no, i suppose not. good night inada."

there was no point in bidding fëanor a peaceful night's sleep; he would not sleep. in celebrimbor's memory, their family's patriarch had not slept once.

* * *

 

the lab complex was some ten stories below ground in an abandoned dwarven mining venture; the company had gone under a century ago and been abandoned ever since. most floors were empty and most-likely haunted (if not by spirits then by squatters and goblins) but the fëanorian family had taken a few for themselves. their work was not strictly legal and their names topped the most-wanted lists of several foreign governments (those where their family did not hold power, that is) for petty things like embezzlement, unethical scientific research, and a few notable preternatural disasters.

celebrimbor's large assortment of uncles and cousins were as inventive as they were ruthless in their ambitions.

he emerged onto the ground level of the complex from an elevator made indistinguishable from the graffitied and cracked wall by a careful array of filtered projection set within the concrete. just outside the elevator, to the right, the roof had collapsed, letting in all manner of new-grown moss and plants, small vermin, moonlight, and, tonight, the rain. it drizzled into streams across the uneven floor.

celebrimbor took some satisfaction in splashing through them.

the rain suited his mood. the euphoria of drunkenness had settled into an uneasy sickness. he hoped it was anxiety and not the impending need to vomit; he had not had that much.

it was lucky that he had stayed in the lab so late: the first bus of the morning would be reaching the outskirts of the city in half an hour. he had only to walk a mile to the stop.

he leaned against the already-bent signpost demarcating the bus stop with water dripping down the back of his leather jacket-- he made a note on the haltha set into his palm to purchase one with a hood, aesthetics and good taste be damned-- and made it an impressive five minutes before pressing a finger to the hinge of his jaw, just in front of his ear. he had elboron on speed-dial in the arabeth he'd implanted last month. it was the most-useful experimental self-surgery he had ever done.

celebrimbor watched his palm, the haltha displayed only a selfie he had goaded elboron into taking shortly after they met and tried to compose his voicemail--

then, right as the bus pulled up and its ramp descended, from the other end of the line, "yeah?"

celebrimbor blinked stupidly into the middle distance, caught up in the sudden inability to walk and talk at the same time. luckily, the bus was automated and there was no driver, nor any other passengers coming this far out this early, to be annoyed with him.

"i don't know if my grandfather knows the year any more or that he ever did," was the non sequitur he managed as he boarded. "the way he talks sometimes, it's like he's still in valinor and he thinks anything can be done without consequence. i've never actually talked to anyone who knew him then and i'm beginning to think he made it all up. his sons will say otherwise but, you know them, they'll do anything for him. they'll kill for him."

he opted to stand near the rear exit. sitting would make him more aware of the water that had gotten down the back of his jacket, helped in no small part by his hair, long and braided down his back as it was. beneath the leather, his shirt clung to his skin. it was a miserable feeling.

"and it's not that anything's happened it's just... he has this tendency to get obsessed with things. which is useful," he caught himself back peddling-- fëanor had made them their vast empire of businesses both legal and illicit, had enabled their family's many branches to live in great comfort, had himself given great advances to science and technology-- "but there has to be a line somewhere, do you know what i mean?" he gave half a breath of pause then, "and, by the way, good morning. i'm sorry-- i didn't mean to just... do this but. it's been a long day. night. morning?"

elboron hefted the bat over his shoulder as his phone rang and held a finger up to the beaten and bloody man before him. "one second." and he picked up the line.

the man wasn't going anywhere anyway. elboron had broken his legs twenty minutes ago and hydraulic fluid was puddling beneath him. elboron stepped out of the room, closing the door behind him and stepping out into the wider, open space of the warehouse he'd set up shop in for the night. "what's he done now? and morning. it's morning. it's three in the morning, actually, cel. i thought you were going to leave his house earlier than this."

it wasn't exactly safe on the streets. ever. elboron himself made sure of that at times. it wasn't exactly easy, working for mirkwood, but elboron was exceedingly good at it. it paid well and had medical coverage, even though that coverage was often a backstreet doctor with one good eye and several broken mechanical toes.

elboron meandered his way up the stairs to the upper level of the warehouse. he had never liked fëanor, or his sons. his father-in-law was rather enough to deal with by himself, and elboron wasn't keen on spending any sort of time with the rest of cel’s family. it wasn't just preference borne of personality difference; it was instinct.

celebrimbor caught the tail end of a broken, animal sort of keen and he elected to ignore it.

"i know i just-- we got to talking you know how we get when we have an idea. and... he hasn't done anything but it's like with children. when they're quiet and aren't committing crimes against cuia you is when you should be the most worried about what they're up to." he sounded just like his uncles. all of them. that was not a vote in favor of the fëanorian patriarch.

"i might be a little drunk," he admitted, hoping that would explain away some of his paranoia, make it seem less.

the bus's floor-to-ceiling exterior display showed the city was rapidly materializing around him; it made some people seasick but the constant movement and sensation of floating, ungrounded, through space comforted celebrimbor. from the shanties the bus jettisoned past the abandoned mining district now into the suburbs. soon he would be in central sirion with it's layers upon layers of life, with the lowest districts stretching stories below and bottom-lit train trestles laced delicate patterns far above.

celebrimbor thought it had all the complex beauty of an old-growth rainforest; less-kind assessments compared it to a termite mound.

"i'm sure it's nothing. he wants to find some way to harness a soul and bind it to the inorganic." there came nausea again. "and the thing is... the thing is, i'm pretty sure i know how to do it. in theory. and there's no one better at putting theory into practice than fëanor because he has no idea of his own limits and-- like i said, i'm a little drunk and there's nothing actually happening i just--"

he smiled ruefully to himself and stepped off into the organized chaos of the bus station. bodies traversed numbered and color-coded routes on the floor to connections and exits. celebrimbor stepped in to follow along a white exit line that would spit him out an elevator ride some 50 stories up and a few blocks east from his apartment.

"i just i need sleep and i wanted to hear you telling me so, really, that's all."

the upper level of the warehouse was emptier than the ground floor. below the loading dock where elboron paced, there were abandoned boxes and shelving and a nice view of the rusting machinery hooked to the ceiling. elboron knew there hadn't been anyone here in quite a long time but the skittering of the rats was more than enough to have him on edge. this had been an ardan warehouse. it was next door to an android processing plant, and he was sure there were some parts still hanging around in the darker corners of the building.

"hold now, celebrimbor," he said sternly, peering over the railing down at a rusty shelf. "and tell me how you're really feeling about all this because it sounds like you're not very comfortable with your pechannas grandfather's ideas."

there was a muffled shout from below and he sighed softly, half wishing he'd knocked out his task before coming upstairs.

the askance glances celebrimbor got from strangers, he objectively knew, were a direct result of the faint glow of the arabeth wiring beneath his skin-- a glittering spiderweb down his jaw and neck all the way to his palm, that wandered up, too, into the pitch black of his hair, just visible behind his ear-- a technology that was not available on the market because it was, more or less, illegal for cuian trials.

(a few side effects like seizures and cognitive dissolution and perception distortions had made them so. it was stupid, really, to outlaw something so useful when the side effects were only the result of incompetent biomedical nanoengineers and unlucky genes.)

but he still saw them looking and stood in the elevator blushing because his traitorous brain could only fixate on elboron's tone and the fact that people were seeing him being scolded.

"i've told you. in not so many words, but i have told you," he insisted, knowing he risked sounding petulant. "he might kill someone. again. possibly several someones in the hopes of creating an abomination for... no apparent reason, except to perhaps prove to himself and everyone else that he is not bound by  the laws of elenath or valar or cuia...  and... i'm afraid of what it will mean if he succeeds. not to mention my role in helping him work it out in the first place-- i just should have come home earlier, you're right."

"i'm not around to be right, you know. i'm not on the phone with you to be right." elboron started to make his way back down the stairs, sliding his silenced augur out of his shoulder holster in case his task had decided to try something. "i don't like to be right. i just worry about you. and i hate your fucking family."

he had no qualms saying it when celebrimbor's relatives were who they were. elboron had grown up hearing about the house of fëanor and all of their slights against his own family. frankly, he didn't care what his family said about fëanor, but meeting the elf himself had informed elboron's opinions. he didn't hold him in high regard. nor did he respect his sons, who all trailed after and protected their father like dogs. "if he decides to do something with the information you've given him, it's not going to be your fault, know that. he would figure it out himself without you either way, cel."

"no, no, i know-- i'm sorry." on second thought it might have been the conversation about murder earning him the extra space in the elevator and concerned glances from strangers. either way, he was glad for the elbow room and positively fled the elevator before the doors had finished opening. "they're not all that bad, you know, only most of them," he said with slight humor. his love for his family was great but not wholly unconditional; a fact that he bore with great discomfort and a ration of guilt.

he had reached the point of not-yet-dry that was humid and miserable. he restrained himself, barely, from pulling his hair out of its braid and wringing it out right there in the middle of the street. if he did not so love the jacket elboron had given him he would shed it, too, and probably leave it behind for all the smothering overwarm feeling it was giving him now that he was out of the rain. what he would not give to be able to teleport home; that would have to be his next project. he had little taste for quantum physics but no one else seemed to be making progress in that area of transportation and he found himself in desperate need of it. perhaps durin would have ideas on a starting point.

the causeway was just beginning to become overcrowded with morning commute foot traffic and celebrimbor walked at a fast clip, slipping between those too slow for him and hopping up onto the railing dividing the directions of pedestrians when the congestion became too much. while not the done thing, it was a much faster way to get around.

"sîdhon," he sighed, overwhelmed and weary and full of the kind of love that did not rest but never tired, "you know that's not how these things work. not legally, nor morally, nor subjectively within the family when push comes to shove and someone needs to be held accountable for inspiring grandfather's unique brand of manic insanity because he, himself, is beyond reproach. i would that i knew better than to be taken in by him but it seems i can't manage that."

"perhaps you should just allow me to do the favor that everyone has been begging for the last year," elboron murmured, and of course he meant murdering fëanor. it would be no great loss. celebrimbor's beautiful, genius brain more than made up for it.

his ears perked as another shout echoed through the warehouse and decided that it was time to take care of the man he'd been tormenting. they were sending a message, the mirkwoods, to one of the other families, and elboron just happened to be the best at that particular sort of thing. it wasn't that he enjoyed it, it was just that it was a job, and he was good at it. really.

he rolled his shoulders and started down the hallway to the room he'd left his mark in. the man had just barely made it out of the room and was wriggling his way down the hallway, leaving a trail of blood and viscous fluid behind him. he started to let out a strange whining sound as soon as he saw elboron and began to push himself the other way.

"go home, meleth-nîn. don't let your grandfather worry you; he isn't the slightest bit worth it." elboron pointed the augur at his mark's head and pulled the trigger, the pop of the suppressor ringing in his ears for a moment. "and anyway, i'll be home soon as well. just got finished with a bit of business. we can talk more about it when i get there?"

the breath celebrimbor released fell somewhere between a sigh and a groan. “no. because you would likely not be the last and i don’t relish burying you. i don’t know that your family would let me attend the funeral.” no enemy of their house had succeeded yet in killing fëanor. it had proved easier to maim and wound his sons and their extended kin, but only just barely and their revenge was always much worse than the instigating blow.

the railing came to a stairwell— a multi-laned spiral up several more stories; it would let out at his building’s front door— and rather than run up the rest of the railing he leapt to the ground then took the stairs two at a time.

“i don’t think i’ll be any more coherent, but i’ll see if i can’t stay awake until you get here.” it still pleased him to no end how easy it had been to clear out a drawer for elboron and get his palm coded to the lock on the apartment door. when he added, “be safe getting here,” it came with a tacit and don’t get caught.

"i'm sure his downfall will come from he himself, and it won't be satisfying at all." elboron toed at the corpse before him, and, satisfied, retrieved his bike helmet from the other room. he'd left his motorcycle cloaked in the alley behind the building, and it was still there when he returned to it, untouched. not that he had thought anyone would even be able to find it with the cloaking, but elboron knew certain criminal elements that had started developing visors that could detect cloaking units.

he slid onto the bike, pressing his palm into the dash and humming in satisfaction as the purr of the engine starting ran through his body. "you know me, cel, safety is my middle name."


	2. Chapter 2

celebrimbor dreamt of fire. this was not unusual. he had heard songs of the great forges of aulë, those places where the deep magic of the world was wrought and life brought into being; the smiths from valinor of old who bent life and steel into weapons of legend, his own grandfather’s roots in some deep country far from sirion shaping light into—

something far greater than his sleeping mind could fathom.

something that radiated a searing brightness that could not be called _light_ because it ran deeper than even photons could penetrate, winding itself through the fabric of universes and expanding to undo them. a terrible un-light that stank of pride and defiance and stripped flesh from bone, time from space, as it sank through the world of the present and the world to come. he watched the progress of it in horror; it was coming toward him with inevitable steadiness and he did not know that any fragment of his faë would be left in its wake, let alone his body.

he awoke screaming with the agony of the unlight slicing through his body.

a sliver of silvery sunlight slipped across his bed, to the floor, all the way to the door. the morning-blooming amaranth he kept on the bookshelf at the foot of his bed were stretching themselves toward the light in desperate hunger. celebrimbor threw himself away from it. later, he would consider it a lucky thing that he did not have a habit of cocooning himself in blankets in his sleep but instead gathered them into a makeshift body pillow to wrap around— being trapped in them might have started a fire.

the burning did not cease with wakefulness. he stayed on the floor, on his hands and knees, well away from the strip of sunlight bisecting the bedroom. his left side from the front of his hip around to the middle of his back felt cloven, as if something were trying to bubble out of his body from the inside. it was too bright in his bedroom to see what was wrong but cautious fingers told him the flesh was tender, raw, wet— he could smell his own blood and lymph fluid.

groaning, from pain and fear, he stood. pressing a hand to the sound, he knew, would probably help stabilize it, but he could not bear to do it. he had never in his life been burnt so badly.

he did not approach the bedroom door too closely, rather cracked it open and slipped through— to avoid the light from the curtains. his head and eyes ached; breathing too heavily hurt them and the light was wicked.

he shut the bathroom door behind him. locked it to be certain, as if that would keep out any assailant or light that might seek him.

in the bathroom mirror he could see the burn clearly. it looked as if it had been made by acid but it was as straight as a brand, wrapped from his navel around to the dimple on the left side of his spine. distantly, training from some lab somewhere in his past— before he had sunk wholesale into his grandfather’s research ventures and the dearth of safety protocol that came with them— had preached flushing with cold water.

with trembling fingers he turned on the shower and stood beneath it in the dark.

* * *

 

if elboron were asked to choose any one thing about himself that he was proud of, it would have to be his strange sort of prescience. an ancestral gift and a holdover from ages-past, it was the sudden and confident feeling that something in his life had, at that moment, gone tits up. it was never wrong. considering he was on his way to celebrimbor's for an early lunch when it hit, he would have to say it was something to do with cel himself. it was almost nausea, the way it hit him, the feeling that something had gone terribly wrong. it took root in his gut and pulled up, and he slid off of his motorcycle nearly before stopping it completely, didn't even bother parking it in the designated area.

a few of the tenants were out in the hall, peering up the stairwell, and he could hear one of them on the phone with the police, saying something about a murder, and---gods, elboron couldn't deal with this. couldn't deal with his gut feeling being any sort of right, or the hushed voices of the people around him. he went up the stairs instead, forgoing the elevator entirely. it was unreliable at best and he was not feeling like gambling.

there was only one tenant outside of celebrimbor's door when elboron strolled up and the dwarf looked ready to kick the door in.

"oh, fuck, i'm glad you're here. he's been screaming something awful for the past few minutes, we thought something had happened," the dwarf explained. elboron wished he could remember his name. he recognized the beads in one of his beard braids as celebrimbor’s work.

"just screaming?" he pressed his hand to the lock and it registered his biometrics, welcoming into the apartment as the door slid open. he didn't wait for the dwarf's reply, just let the door close behind him and stepped into the living room, sliding his augur out of its holster.

there was blood in the hallway outside of celebrimbor's bedroom,a few drops, spread thin with speed of movement. he could hear the shower running. elboron checked the bedroom first, sweeping the barrel of his augur over the room and wondering vaguely why he didn't just become a police officer-- his parents might have been more accepting of that. but then latrim family enforcer was not the career path most sane people wanted period.

the bedsheets were a mess and spattered with more of what he assumed was celebrimbor's blood. he slid the augur back into its holster and made his way across the hall, stepping into the bathroom carefully.

he assumed that if someone had attacked cel, they wouldn't be showering now. the apartment wouldn't be as quiet as a tomb, and the droplets of blood that led from bedroom to bath would not be there. elboron worried about what sort of experiment celebrimbor had started running now.

there was a shape behind the shower door. elboron would know it anywhere, though he disliked how it curled up on itself. "cel? are you alright? i'm coming in."

he stood stock still in soaking wet pajama pants, slumped against the slick tile of his shower, his left side under the gentle spray. the cold stopped bothering him -- how long ago? minutes? an hour? he was unable to string together a coherent thought. he swallowed thickly, a mouthful of saliva thick as if he'd drunk it from a glass. "leave the light off. it -- it's too bright."

he'd grown used to the mineral and flouride of the water, the wet cotton of his pajamas, the softer wound-and-panic scent of his own skin. but elboron, he smelled of blood. the iron stench made him dizzy-- what had elboron been doing? he killed people, sometimes, that was no secret between them, but he never came home anything less than impeccably clean.

"i-- something happened. i don't know what." he thought, i _should get out of the shower_. he thought, i _should put on dry clothes_. he thought, i _should go to a hospital for this._

elboron radiated heat; celebrimbor could taste it in the air along with the thinner scents of sandalwood and engine ozone. "this... was not how i was planning on our morning going. are the police here yet?" his neighbors hadn’t been quiet in their hungry murmuring.

elboron pulled the shower door open and frowned at the sight before him, celebrimbor leaning against the wall under the water, still in his pajamas. his eyes adjusted quickly to the darkness of the room, and he sucked in a sharp breath at the state of cel, his eyes dark and a great, bubbling burn stretching across his hip that was--- really quite ugly but also seemed to be stitching itself back together in an unnatural way.

"who the fuck did this to you?" he demanded immediately. "are they still here somewhere? i'm going to kill them." he was sorely tempted to step back out into the main room and search until he found them, but there was something that told him to stay put. perhaps it was the way celebrimbor was looking at him. such a strange look in his darkened eyes. maybe it was some sort of virus, because he didn't know what would make celebrimbor look at him like he was a meal.

"ai, no, no one did this to me." he made a soft shushing noise, "you don't need to kill anyone." and he was suddenly upright on the bathmat, water drizzling from the ends of his hair. the burn across his side had grown tight and ached deep; he thought even the shifting of his organs as they went about their business of living aggravated it.

in a brief and clear flash of insanity or insight he decided that he could not, would not reach for elboron. _not yet._

"i just woke up and-- i think it was the sun."

but that conviction did not stop him from stepping close to breathe him in. there were no light sources in his bathroom but the circuit board pattern that elboron had tattooed in chromatophore ink had their own luminosity, fainter than starlight and utterly fascinating. "i think it was the sun," he repeated, distantly, leaning close to inspect the pattern of a motherboard on the side of elboron's throat without touching him.

elboron opened his mouth to speak but his throat had gone suddenly dry. he knew, without a doubt, that if celebrimbor tried to touch him he would step away. there was something deep within him, within his very fae that told him so. his instincts had always been very good and there was some sort of screaming horror right in the center of him that was making a valiant attempt to claw from his throat.

something was wrong here. something was wrong with celebrimbor.

"the sun. cel, what are you talking about."

"i don't know what _else_ could have done it. i'm here alone. or... well, i was alone. but now you're here." he said this with a faint smile, his gaze flicking up to elboron's eyes just for a moment. his pupils were so open in the dark; how well could he see? probably not quite half so well as this. "and anyway i didn't do this to myself," he said, sounding more grounded and stepped away, edging around elboron to reach for the bathroom door. he could feel the heat off it before he touched it, as if a fire burned on the other side, nevertheless he persisted. he remembered the angle at which the sun came through his bedroom window; the shaft of light that had trapped him here in the bathroom should have shifted from doorway to inner wall; it was safe now.

only the nightlight he kept in the hall was lit but it seemed bright as day; but it did not burn and that was good enough. he could, inexplicably, feel the sun. it was some measure south of where it had begun the morning waking him. in sopping pajamas he went into the kitchen; something had gone horribly wrong but it hadn't killed him yet and caffeine would only improve the situation.

**Author's Note:**

> There will probably be more of this in the future, but we can't commit to any timelines right now.
> 
> Things to look forward to:
> 
> \- Elboron's deep, dark secrets  
> \- Celebrimbor's succulent collection  
> \- Pissed off Valar  
> \- Sauron and Melkor: Eco-terrorists


End file.
